Silkeborg - Museum of Art

The Museum of Art dates from 1982 and was designed by the architect Niels Frithiof Truelsen and his colleagues. Jean Dubuffet designed the ceramic cladding for the facade, which was carried out by Erik Nyholm. Visitors to the museum pass through four large studios; here and there are "resting-places", with furniture by the Finn Alvar Aalto.

The museum has works by modern artists, including paintings by members of the COBRA group, founded in 1948, to which the Dane Asger Jorn belonged. Jorn grew up and spent his life as a painter in Silkeborg; when he died in 1973 at the age of 59 he left to the town some 5,500 works by internationally-esteemed artists as well as several thousand of his own. He was 16 when he painted his first picture - a seascape with sailing ships. In the Second World War he produced his "The Seasons" cycle of paintings, which can now be admired in the entrance hall but which at the time served as black-out blinds in an apartment block in Copenhagen! Jorn painted abstract pictures with a powerful use of color, some with figures from Nordic folk art. He became an art collector after the war, many items being obtained in exchange for his own pictures. In this way he acquired works by Odilon Redon, James Ensor, Emil Nolde, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Fernand Leger, Jean Dubuffet, Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky, Lucio Fontana, Echauren Matta, Enrico Baj and other well-known artists. In addition to the exhibition rooms there are others used for the instruction of art students and those taking courses and a children's workshop.